The NPO Standards Industry Summit, co-hosted by IPEC and OIF, concluded in Shenzhen with a landmark agreement on international standards for near-packaged optics (NPO). The event, held on September 10 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center, brought together industry leaders from China, the United States, Japan, and beyond, including experts from OIF, CAICT, Tencent, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Huawei, Broadcom, SENKO, Amphenol, and Yamaichi. The consensus reached at the summit lays a solid foundation for the industry upgrade and large-scale commercial use of NPO, a technology poised to become the preferred interconnect solution for SuperPoDs in the near term.
As reported by Media OutReach Newswire, the urgency for standardized NPO solutions stems from the escalating demands of SuperPoDs. Dr. Zhao Wenyu, Vice Chairman of IPEC and Deputy Director of the Technology and Standards Research Institute of CAICT, explained that traditional optical modules are consuming excessive energy as SuperPoDs scale, while co-packaged optics (CPO) face constraints such as a closed industry chain and complex operations and maintenance. In contrast, NPO offers excellent energy efficiency, a favorable trade-off in port density, and strong compatibility with existing pluggable ecosystems. Dr. Zhao called upon stakeholders across industry, academia, research institutions, and user groups to collaborate on NPO standards and drive the ecosystem from 'usable' to 'easy-to-use at scale'.
The summit also highlighted the rapid technological progress driving NPO adoption. Jiang Zhibin, Optical Network Architect at Tencent, noted that as SuperPoDs expand and SerDes data rates increase, optical interconnect solutions will advance more rapidly towards 6.4T NPO, necessitating opto-electronic collaborative design to overcome advanced packaging challenges. Dr. Man Jiangwei, Director of the Advanced Opto-Electronics Laboratory at Huawei, revealed that Huawei has launched the industry's first high-bandwidth 7.2T NPO product, which was demonstrated at the IPEC exhibition booth. This product features 'high bandwidth, high reliability, and high availability' while achieving 'low latency, low power consumption, and low cost' through key technologies like built-in light sources and highly-integrated SiPh chips.
Coinciding with the China International Optoelectronic Exposition (CIOE), the IPEC booth showcased the latest achievements of the global NPO industry chain, particularly from the US, Japan, and China. The display included high-density connector solutions from leading US and Japanese vendors, as well as NPO modules of various capacities developed by multiple Chinese vendors, alongside several NPO switches, demonstrating a high level of commercial maturity. This joint exhibition strengthened industry confidence in building an open and prosperous NPO ecosystem.
The implications of the summit are far-reaching. By reaching a consensus on international NPO standards and streamlining collaboration between standards organizations and the industry chain, the event marks a milestone for the global NPO industry. The agreement reduces fragmentation and accelerates the path to large-scale commercial deployment, which is critical as data centers and AI workloads demand ever-increasing bandwidth and energy efficiency. With major players aligned on standards and products already demonstrating commercial readiness, the NPO ecosystem is poised for rapid growth, potentially reshaping the optical interconnect market and enabling the next generation of SuperPoD infrastructure.
